Simple mode, subscription settings and stars

There are some features which I’ve implemented in the server a long time ago (in spring) but which haven’t made it into the uPod user interface … until today! Some of you who only have a handful of podcasts and listen to each and every episode asked for a “simple mode” where new episodes are added directly to the library and the inbox is no longer available. Well, here it is: Simply disable the “Inbox mode” in the “User Interface” settings and all new episodes will be delivered directly to your library and the inbox section will be hidden. Changing the inbox mode on one device will apply it to all of your devices.

A really powerful feature are the subscription specific settings (see first screenshot below). These allow you to edit the following settings specific for each of your subscribed podcasts:

Add to library: If enabled, new episodes for this podcast will be delivered directly to your library instead of your inbox (not available if you disabled the inbox mode).

Max kept episodes: Especially useful in conjunction with the previous setting, this one allows you to configure the maximum number of episodes of this podcast to keep in your library — older ones will automatically be deleted (unless they are starred — see below). I use this with a number of one for my daily news podcast, so that I always have the latest episode of the podcast in my library ready for listening. I am never interested in the news of yesterday, so it’s OK, that older episodes are deleted.

Auto download: If enabled, episodes of this podcast will be added to the download queue as soon as they are added to the library. This option is disabled if you already configured uPod to automatically add all library episodes to your download queue.

As everything else in uPod these settings are stored in the cloud and will affect all of your devices.

As the “Max kept episodes” setting mentioned above will automatically delete episodes from your library you need a way to tell uPod to keep interesting episodes. This is where the new starring feature comes onto the scene (see second screenshot below): Starred episodes will never be automatically deleted by uPod. So starring is a simple and great way for collecting interesting stuff and — guess what — the starring state is synced across all of your devices.